Wizard Question:

Wizard Question:

Wizard Question:

I’m not sure if anyone’s covered this before, but I was wondering about the Wizard’s advanced move Prodigy.

It states: Choose a spell. You prepare that spell as if it were one level lower.

The wizard spells are classified in increments of odd numbers 1,3,5,7,9.

So if I chose a level 3 spell to reduce with this move, would it become a level 2 spell (which doesn’t exist), or would it drop a whole “level” and become a level one spell?

Thoughts?

25 thoughts on “Wizard Question:”

  1. On the flip side, does it mean that, if you’re level 4, you can take a level 5 spell and make it level 4? >=D

     (probably not. =P but i’ve always been curious what people think.)

  2. Well, Wizards can prep their level+1 worth of spell levels, so at level 4 you could prep 5 levels worth of spells. You could do one level 5 or any combination of level 1s and 3s that add up to 5.

    Thanks for the info guys. I’ll pass that on to my group 🙂

  3. Victoria Harlette Well, the rules literally say you can do that. Provided you know a level 5 spell on level 4 for some reason, you can actually prepar and cast it! Never thought of that. Thanks!

  4. Victoria Harlette  Well, you can’t take it into your spell book that way, but you can actually choose prodigy and them choose a spell even if it’s not in your spellbook with the intention of  ‘when I get it I’ll prepare it like it was one level lower’. In my campaign I had a reason to introduce wizard scrolls (much ike the ones from 2nd edition Dnd) and the players could study them and learn spells even though they were not able to prepare them yet. So Prodigy would be extremely useful to use on one of these spells, giving access to it a level earlier instead of just being a way to give you +1 to your spell pool when you choose a certain spell.

  5. Expanded Spellbook helps a Wizard.

    A Human Cleric can choose a highlevel spell with their racial move and then level it down with Chosen One. 

    I considered doing that for a one shot. Polymorph is a fun spell…

  6. Andrzej Zielinski I’d go on a limb and say no. 

    A cantrip/rote isn’t “level 0”. They are a rote. Also negative level spells make little sense. 

  7. Yeah. I know. Sorry to upset you. It was just a joke. A way of sarcastically saying that you can’t make a level 1 spell a cantrip, because they are not level 0 spells, because if they were you’d make them -1 and have +1 to spell pool forever which would be just broken.

  8. Well, it’s not technically a cantrip. You can still choose not to prepare a downgraded level 1 spell. What’s true is that it does not count towards the maximum number of spel levels you can remember (like a cantrip does) but cantrips are always automatically prepared while a downgraded level 1 spell technically isn’t. 

    ‘Silly and makes no sense’? Really? ‘You prepare the spell as if it were one level lower.’ It’s a fancy way of saying ‘Do maths son. Deduct 1 from whatever you chosen.’ While I agree that cantrips are technically not level 0, seeing how you readily agree that whatever spell was downgraded from 1 by ways of substraction (of 1) becomes a catrip I can easily see a lot of sense in deducting yet another 1. You had no reason to call that train of thoughts silly. It’s wrong, sure, but makes sense and is not silly. In many ways it is in fact entertaining 🙂

  9. Andrzej Zielinski

    “Rote” is a word that just refers to repetition. Personally, I’ve always preferred it as a term to “cantrip” for these kinds of spells, since a cantrip is a minor trick.

    At any rate, if a spell is prepared at Level 0, essentially the wizard’s knowledge of that spell is so good they become capable of casting it by rote: they know the motions and the words and whatever you need to cast the spell.

    That’s sort of the point of cantrips and rotes. They’re simple enough that even the novice wizard can perform them from memory.

  10. To clarify: Level 1 spells can be reduced to Level 0 spells through this move. Cantrips are effectively, but not technically Level 0 spells. As such, they cannot be reduced to Level -1 spells, since they don’t technically have a level at all.

  11. I guess the idea being that a -1 level spell would give you another spell slot is a bit much. I’m not sure anyone would read that into the rules. However, ultimately, it’s up to whatever a gaming group decides at the table.

    I’m not sure what negative level magic would look like… It would probably rip open a hole in spacetime… but that’s just me 😉

  12. Functionally, letting you pick a Cantrip to turn into a Level -1 spell would be the same as giving you an extra spell slot, which would be the same as letting you constantly change which spell you prepare at a lower level. Since this is strictly better than the standard usage of the rule, which requires you to pick one spell and stick with it, I think it’s fair to say that that was not the intent.

Comments are closed.